The Beauty of Their Dreams
by cruisedirector
Summary: On the advice of his beloved speech therapist, the King tries to work out what he needs to clear his head.
1. Chapter 1

__This story was posted several months ago on LiveJournal and Archive of Our Own; I hesitated to post it here because I've had such very negative reactions to posting slash on , even with warnings, but recently some things have happened that made me want it archived here as well._ Warnings: Men in intimate situations (though no marriages were harmed in the creation of this story). Women enjoying themselves. Potentially unethical relationship in terms of power/position - monarch/subject, therapist/patient. Potential abuse of correct idioms for the eras and countries involved. Potential mangling of real history and the lives of real individuals based on fictional source material, though I want to make it clear that these characters are based on their film versions and not their historical counterparts; I did borrow some small details from Lionel Logue's grandson's book and from Wikipedia entries on George VI and his family._

(1)

"Something's bothering you." It isn't only Bertie's trouble with his Ks and Qs that alerts Lionel to his mood. It's the way Bertie holds his neck, tossing his head a bit as if to snap it into place.

"It's j-j-just the bloody speech." Bertie looks surprised at himself, then resigned. He raises the hand holding the sheaf of papers, rustling them, though Lionel suspects that isn't the only meaning of _speech_he intends. Those sputtered consonants are the real culprits. Bertie knows as well as Lionel that the stutter is a symptom of some deeper concern.

Lionel sits, waiting, but Bertie remains silent, tilting his head from one side to the other as if he can force the muscles in his throat to relax. After a bit, Lionel asks, "May I?" When he receives a stiff nod, he pushes Bertie's head down, down, until the neck is fully stretched forward. In this position, the tension in the muscles is all too evident. "Have you been sleeping well?" Lionel asks, kneading the offending knots with his thumbs.

"N-not really. You may have noticed that I've a lot on m-my mind." There's a catch in Bertie's breath apart from the stammer. Thinking that he's pushing too hard, Lionel softens the pressure of his fingers, making broad strokes down to Bertie's shoulder blades. The bones jut sharply from his upper back. He's lost weight since he became the King of England. The flabby belly is entirely gone.

"Apart from the war and the kingdom and your family?" Lionel asks lightly. He succeeds in drawing a small laugh from Bertie, more of a moan, really. Under his hands, the neck muscles are slowly relaxing. Lionel lets his fingers stroke to the roots of Bertie's thick, soft hair.

"It's of more of a p-personal nature. I've been having odd dreams." Abruptly the shoulders go rigid. "I wish you'd stop doing that."

Lionel thinks he must have poked a tender spot. He stills his hands, though he keeps his fingers on the warm skin of Bertie's neck. "Nightmares?"

"Not exactly. Just odd." Bertie's cheeks are flushed. Were he another man, Lionel would ask whether there was trouble with Mrs Johnson, but Bertie will tolerate no line of questioning that involves private matters pertaining to Elizabeth.

"Yet troubling enough to distract you from your speech. When did these dreams start?"

"A few nights ago. There was only the one. I would feel more comfortable if you'd stop touching me."

Lionel withdraws his fingers. He knows better than to be stung when Bertie of all patients asserts a demand for his private space. The King exists in the same bubble of isolation as the rest of the Royals, though at the moment he looks particularly hunched, folded in on himself, knees bent at an awkward angle.

And because he is the King, it takes Lionel a few seconds to recognize the posture. It isn't as if he's never seen it in a patient before. The man on the sofa is trying to hide the bulge in his trousers. Had Lionel caused that, with just a few minutes of rubbing at Bertie's neck? Definitely trouble with Mrs Johnson, then.

Bertie is still blushing. Casually, Lionel tells him, "Modern science believes dreams are symbolic," and rises to pour Bertie a drink, trying not to think about the fact that he's apparently given the King of England an erection. Upon consideration, he pours himself a drink as well. "For example, a dream about riding a horse might represent one's wish to master an intellectual or scientific problem that requires taking a mental leap. A dream about stealing someone's trophies might suggest that one wants to possess not the accolades, but some quality in the person from whom they are being stolen."

Bertie smiles into his glass. "I thought modern science believed most dreams were about intimate relations," he says softly, though without any trace of a stammer.

Aha. "Doctor Freud seems to think so. Although a dream that directly involved sex might be about something else entirely...a longing to go fishing, perhaps." It's a poor joke, but succeeds in making Bertie laugh. "I suspect Doctor Freud focused on sex in dreams because it's so common to dream about sex, even with the most inappropriate people, at the most inappropriate times."

"You don't believe that an erotic dream about a specific person implies an attraction to that person?"

Who on Earth has Bertie been dreaming about? His older brother's much-resented wife? His daughter's pretty Bavarian nanny? "Sometimes that's the simplest explanation. But even the notion of erotic attraction is complicated. If a man has a sexual dream about his best friend's wife, the dream may suggest more about that man's underlying envy for some personal quality in his friend than a hidden lust for the woman."

"What if a man were to have a sexual dream about his best friend? Would that mean he secretly wants his friend's wife?"

Lionel laughs warmly. He deserved that after the fishing joke. "Perhaps it means the man is feeling misunderstood and longs for some more direct means of communication."

"Well, in that case...I had a dream about you." Bertie swirls the liquid in his glass. "About us."

It takes a moment for Lionel's mind to piece the conversation together, though less time for his heart to begin to race. "Oh," he says stupidly, his tongue suddenly thick in his mouth. Bertie's face is scarlet, eyes fixed in the distance. "It isn't unusual to dream about one's doctors."

"Even unlicensed ones?" A smile plays about Bertie's lips. "I suppose you're going to tell me that it represents a desire to heal oneself."

"That would depend on the particular patient." Lionel is nearly stammering himself, grasping at anything that sounds rational. "I'm no psychoanalyst, but if a healer has relieved a patient of a great deal of pain, it might represent the patient's wish for a perpetual state of physical comfort. If a healer has played a paternal role for a patient, it might represent a desire for the patient to reconcile with his real father."

Bertie takes a swallow from his glass, then laughs a bit. "No psychoanalyst, but that's never stopped you from trying. I don't think you represent my father, Lionel."

King George V had been a looming, terrifying presence in his son's life. While this news is discouraging for Lionel's ambition to play _Richard III_, he's fairly certain that from Bertie, it's meant as a kindness. "What _do_you think I represent, then?" he asks.

Silence. Perhaps Bertie isn't ready to answer. Lionel frowns a bit.

"In the dream, was I...pushing you?"

"In the dream, I couldn't have been more willing."

Wrapping away his response to this admission to examine later, Lionel takes a swallow of his own drink. "That may explain why you find it so troubling. If it isn't about how you see yourself as a man, but as a King..."

"It wasn't troubling at first. I woke up feeling very good. I was happy." Now Bertie meets his eyes, uncrossing his legs. "So much so that it took several hours before the shame and fear and all the rest started to crowd in."

"Bertie, I've been trying not to ask the 'trouble with the wife' question..."

"None at all. This has nothing to do with her." The words flow smoothly; Bertie doesn't want to discuss it, but he's telling the truth as he sees it.

"Yet you can't bear to have me touch you, even clinically."

"I think you enjoy touching me. You like to elbow into my space."

The retort is not vicious but swift, and undeniable, one guilty confession traded for another. Lionel knows better than to disagree with it. Offering a chuckle instead of a reply, he asks, "Would you like to believe the dream is _my_fault?"

"Absolutely. You don't mind, do you?" Bertie smiles, and Lionel feels grateful they've talked about his own work with soldiers who needed an outlet for things they couldn't express to anyone else. By now Bertie should know better than to blame the therapist for the symptoms. He does seem much more relaxed. Perhaps he merely needed to know that Lionel didn't think there was cause for concern.

All of which would be fine if Lionel weren't now the one with a bulge in his trousers. That's not an entirely new problem, and Lionel has several theories about why, involving Bertie's pedigree and position and the things he'll say only to Lionel. But Lionel has been extremely careful to hide such reactions from Bertie. Suppose he's slipped up? Has Bertie noticed? As he contemplates the bottom of his empty glass, another question occurs to Lionel that might provoke Bertie to reveal any unvoiced resentment. "Should I mind? Was _I_enjoying myself?"

That makes Bertie laugh out loud. "I believe you were, yes. As much as I was. Did you want to know which of us was on top?" Lionel jerks his head up, then finds he can't take his eyes off the flushed, glowing face of the only man who has ever aroused him in this way. Years of laying the blame on title and station now seem disingenuous - a coward's excuses. He fears that his own gaze reveals too much. A pregnant pause, then, "You were. You had me - let us say in an exposed position - and I was quite excited to be there."

Lionel scarcely dares to breathe. He may be no psychoanalyst, but he knows the dangerous terrain of responding to a patient's misplaced adulation or adoration. Lionel hasn't been able to forget the time Bertie revealed that he and his brother had shared a woman in Paris; by the time Bertie had explained that they hadn't actually shared her at the same time, Lionel had been as hard in his trousers as he is now. It was not a subject he could pursue, just as it's probably treason to ask the King whether he has ever in life been in such a position outside of a dream.

"Have I shocked you?" asks Bertie, looking down and spinning his glass in his hand.

"You must know I don't shock easily." There is gratitude in Bertie's eyes when he glances back at Lionel, who feels it his duty to add, "Were you trying to shock me?"

"No. I didn't want to scare you away." Bertie sets down the glass and leans forward, close enough for Lionel to smell the alcohol and stale cigarette smoke on his mouth. Too close. "I need you too much."

Lionel's breath sounds quick and shallow in his own ears. There are boundaries that are never meant to be crossed with patients, but this is no mere patient; this is his beloved friend, the King of England. "You know that I'm yours," he says hoarsely - not quite what he intended, not the professional reassurance for which he'd been grasping. And Bertie takes his face in both hands - one bearing his wedding ring, the other the ring of his coronation - and kisses him.

It's a gentle kiss, but Lionel feels it in every part of his body. Men once believed that a kiss from a divinely crowned monarch could heal their diseases; if all kisses from Kings are as affecting as this one, Lionel understands why. He makes no effort to remove himself, nor does Bertie, so they sit like that for quite a long time, with Bertie's hands cupping Lionel's face. "Thank you," Bertie says finally, without a trace of stammer.

Lionel manages a smile. "_Now_you've shocked me."

"I would apologize, but I'm not sorry." They both huff a laugh, breathing practically into each other's mouths. "I'd do it again."

What Lionel should be doing is carefully pulling Bertie's hands from his face, explaining why this is risky for their professional relationship and by extension for Bertie's progress. Part of his mind knows this as he leans in to kiss Bertie back. The hands slide around the back of his head, tilting it, and the kiss changes, becomes heated and wet and hungry. Bertie shifts, tugging on Lionel, until Lionel is practically on top of him and there's no longer any chance of pretending he feels anything other than what he does.

"You're as hard as I am," Bertie whispers, voice quivering not with uncertainty but a delight Lionel has only ever imagined hearing. A hand slides down his chest in the direction of the proof. "Have you thought about this before? Why didn't you tell me?"

Lionel stares at him. Then they both begin to laugh, clutching at each other. "I can't imagine," he manages to choke out between spasms of hilarity that block out thought. When the laughter finally stops, he and the King are fully embracing, faces pressed together, legs crossed over one another's on the sofa.

"It's your dream. What do _you_think it means, Bertie?" murmurs Lionel.

"I think..." Bertie's breath is warm in his ear, and the pause has less to do with speech problems than the fact that Bertie's nose has become distracted rubbing against Lionel's cheek. "I think it means that I love you."

Before Lionel can absorb these words, let alone reply to them, he hears voices in the hallway. Bertie's head lifts, turning toward the sound. The King has important business, and Lionel has other appointments, a lifetime away in Harley Street. They have hardly rehearsed the speech. Sitting back quickly, they tug their clothing straight before the knock they both know will follow. "Tomorrow?" Bertie asks, and though his posture has returned to that of a monarch, his voice has a breathless, frightened catch that puts Lionel in mind of a much younger man - a man unused to expressing affection and doubtful of its return.

"Tomorrow." He can see the fear and hope in Bertie's face as clearly as he could see it the first time Bertie ever came to see him, when Lionel had promised Bertie that his speech defect could be cured. There is no time now for carefully chosen words. "Bertie, we need never speak of this again, but you must know that I've loved you for a long time..."

Bertie has bowed his head in acknowledgment, not quite smiling, his nostrils flaring, when the knock sounds and his features go as still as if he's pulled a mask over his face. But he looks up, eyes bright with happiness, and Lionel knows that even if they had another moment, he would not try to take that away from Bertie with a defensive attempt to reestablish professional boundaries. By the time the door opens, they are sitting far apart, the King reading steadily from his sheaf of papers, Lionel nodding studiously with his chin in his hand.

(2)

"Mrs Roosevelt says that the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams," Elizabeth reads aloud. She and Bertie have been discussing inspirational quotes and how insipid most of them are; Bertie would rather quote the Bible, but there's always the likelihood that some denomination or other will feel left out, and it's a time for the whole of Britain to unite. She doesn't understand his astonished expression. While it's true that no such platitudes were uttered to the King and Queen during their visit to America, Bertie has seen enough of the Roosevelts on the newsreels to know the sorts of things they say in their speeches.

Straightening, Bertie says something even more astonishing: "I want to invite the Logues to dinner."

Elizabeth looks at him, letting the paper slip from her hand onto the sofa. She knows that Bertie still worries overmuch about his own speeches, and that Lionel Logue has transformed her husband in ways of which he probably isn't even aware, but that's something quite different than trying to force a friendship with his family. "Both of them?" she asks, a note of alarm in her voice. "Not the children, too?"

"Not the children, but I don't want to appear to be snubbing his wife. This is important to me."

Bertie seems agitated, though not unpleasantly so. His voice is clear. "If it's important to you, then of course we shall," Elizabeth says briskly. Perhaps it would be better to have both the Logues. It has not escaped Elizabeth's notice that the King has something of a schoolboy crush on his speech therapist - terribly inappropriate, since the man is a commoner and Australian at that, but far less troublesome than if he'd developed a passion for some nobleman's wife, or, worse, for some nobleman. It is, after all, because of Logue that Bertie is no longer too timid to fancy himself rather dashing in his uniform.

"You don't mind terribly much, do you, darling?" Her husband looks chastened, again like a schoolboy. Elizabeth can't help but smile at him. It isn't as if she hasn't been enjoying the benefits of Logue's work with Bertie. He often leaves his sessions full of passion, eager for a romp in her bed, and if all that passion isn't entirely focused on her, no matter; she is still his beloved wife. Under no circumstances does she wish to risk another pregnancy, particularly after the pneumonia. A distraction would do him good, provided it can be managed, which she believes this one can.

"Of course I don't mind. You seem quite different now that you're sure of your voice. Not only as a speaker, but happier," she tells him.

"I am happier. He's helped me more than I can p-possibly repay." Elizabeth studies her husband's profile. Is he blushing? "I owe him...well, a very great deal. I know he's being compensated for his time, but it's beyond that."

Bertie's fingers make a thoughtless gesture, opening and closing, and his thumb rubs the knuckle of his forefinger. It's a gesture she remembers from their courtship, from a time when he was too nervous to kiss her. So it _is_like that. Better to keep it where she can keep an eye on it, for the protection of all of them.

She doesn't have to consider Logue her equal to know that he is trustworthy. He hadn't even told his own wife that the Duke of York was his patient.

"I'll have an invitation sent," Elizabeth says matter-of-factly. "I suppose we had better ask them to stay after dinner. I imagine it would be a thrill for Mrs Logue to spend the night in the Palace. Dancing might be a bit much, though."

Bertie is definitely blushing. "I imagine it would," he agrees.

(3)

Things don't quite go according to plan, or perhaps they do. The Queen invites Myrtle to accompany her husband to Buckingham Palace, and though they have little else in common, children are always a safe subject. Myrtle doesn't think of herself as an impressionable person, yet it's hard not to be awed in the presence of Their Majesties, at least until she's had several glasses of wine. After dinner, the four of them move into a drawing room with a turntable and proceed from wine to sherry. The son of a brewer, Lionel hardly ever shows any sign of drunkenness, and Elizabeth is careful to take tiny sips, but Myrtle and the King are only too susceptible, particularly once they've put music on and Lionel and Bertie have goaded each other into singing. Which is how Myrtle comes to find herself dancing around the private rooms of the palace in the arms of the monarch while her husband and the Queen watch.

The King appears to have eyes for no woman other than his wife, even though his wife is not the focus of his attentions here. Myrtle has the impression that it's Lionel they want to impress, for reasons she can't fathom. Now she can guess that all the little extras around the house must have come from payments from the Palace, so it isn't as if the King hasn't paid Lionel for his time.

She lets herself think of stories of lecherous monarchs and the wives of subjects, outrageous demands leading to scandals and duels. Horrifying and a bit exciting, though having nothing to do with her own situation; that Myrtle is safe, she has no doubt. She glances at the King's aristocratic jaw. He is facing her, yet barely seems to see her. Even the cigarette-tainted kiss planted on her cheek at the end of the dance is not truly for Myrtle. Lionel is watching, his glass held loosely in his fingers, feet calm on the rug, yet his eyes are dark and intense, his gaze focused not upon Myrtle but her flushed, laughing dance partner.

The Queen seems to find it amusing. "Sweetheart, you'll make Mister Logue jealous, kissing his wife like that," she says mildly.

"Then I shall have to kiss him, too." The King releases Myrtle and turns to Lionel, extending a hand to help him to his feet. Lionel accepts it as easily as he accepts the King pulling him up and into his arms, and, a moment later, kissing him full on the mouth in the view of both women.

Abruptly the evening makes sense to Myrtle, embarrassed though she is to be the last to understand. She has a strange feeling in her belly, not quite jealousy, certainly not anger. It is not until she sees the King's hand slide up Lionel's back into his hair that she recognizes it as arousal. If the King is not ashamed to be seen kissing her husband thus, why should she be ashamed to enjoy it? She steals a glance at the Queen and notes through the fog of drunkenness that Elizabeth's expression is tolerant, even a bit fond.

Myrtle expects Lionel to break free with a self-deprecating laugh, but the kiss goes on longer than propriety could possibly allow. The Queen's eyes have dropped, and when Bertie - bloody hell, _not_ Bertie, the _King_- lets out a soft noise without tearing his mouth from Lionel's, the Queen rises and walks over to Myrtle. "Darling," she calls over her shoulder, "I think I'll show Mrs Logue the salon. You play bridge, don't you, Mrs Logue?"

In her astonishment, staring at the Queen, Myrtle nearly fails to notice the men's heads swiveling toward them. The King's expression is frankly grateful, her husband's more complicated. "That would be lovely, ma'am," Myrtle says to Elizabeth, though her smile is for Lionel, whom she is certain doesn't need her reassurance but perhaps might like her blessing. "I'm sure the men can manage without us."

The Royals have an astonishing collection of playing cards, many produced as souvenirs of royal weddings, bearing the faces of ancestors and relatives of the very King whom Myrtle last saw clinging like a lover to her husband. She wonders whether Lionel will ever tell her what is happening in the room from which the Queen, with a polite if resigned smile, has escorted her, to the sedate salon with its game tables and ornate chairs. Even drunk, Myrtle is a better card player than the Queen, but she lets the Queen win by deliberately tossing her best hands, pairing jack and king with no queen between them. The Queen may not treat her as an equal, but she is unfailingly polite.

After an hour passes, the Queen presses a button Myrtle had not even noticed beneath the table, and before long, she has been escorted to the finest bedroom in which she will ever pass a night, with a magnificent dressing gown already laid out for her and an assurance that her husband will be along presently. The alcohol is taking its toll. She falls asleep practically the moment her head comes to rest on the pillow, and wakes much later from a happy dream of trying on the Queen's jewels to find Lionel snoring comfortably beside her in the dark.

(4)

Lionel watches his wife leave the room with a combination of relief and terror. He can tell from her smile that she isn't angry, but at the moment she's a bit drunk, and more than a bit enchanted to be here at Buckingham Palace being treated with such solicitation by the Queen of England, no matter the reason. "Her Majesty is very understanding," he murmurs to Bertie.

"She knows how much I need you. She sent me to you after my father died, you know - she knew I would want to talk to you. She's more at ease when I'm happy, and nothing has made me happier than you have."

It's hard to say which arouses Lionel more - the physical presence of the King in his uniform or the intimacy of the words. He squeezes Bertie hard, knowing that no amount of physical affection he offers can erase abuse at the hands of a nanny and parents too neglectful to notice. He'd wanted to cry for the small boy with the stammer and leg braces, but Bertie had learned not to cry, and that often took longer to unlearn than not to stammer. Was that why he was so eager to return these ardent kisses?

"Come with me," Bertie breathes in his ear, neither a command nor a plea but a joyful request. There are no servants, no palace staff, not a single royal handler anywhere in the rooms through which they pass, Bertie's fingers holding his own. Is the King planning to take a commoner to his own private room? Lionel knows that traditionally, the King and Queen do not share a bedroom, though their rooms will be connected by a door. His own imagination has never permitted him to conjure this; even since those first kisses, he's never dared progress beyond what boys might do pressed in cabinets or hidden in alcoves.

Abruptly, they are in a room with a sofa and a bed. It seems too small to be the King's bedroom, but with the exception of the grand ballroom and central hall, the rooms in the palace are mostly smaller than Lionel expected - and, despite their grandeur, impersonal. Someone has set out a bottle of brandy and glasses on a rolling table. He's already drunk too much tonight, though his head seems very clear.

"I'll tell you what you p-probably want to know," Bertie says, turning toward Lionel, an ironic smile twisting his lips. "No, I've never done this. Not even in the Navy."

"That isn't what I want to know." Though perhaps Bertie's statement implies a question. If Lionel had a history of this sort of thing, it would be vitally important that the King discover it before anyone else talked. "I never have, either." There are small details he's omitting, a bit of rambunctiousness when he was little more than a boy, but nothing that could lead to blackmail or disgrace. Lionel finds Bertie's hand again. "I suppose I want to know why now. Why me."

"I've already told you," Bertie replies, fixing him with a look of such intensity that Lionel can't take it in. He launches himself at Bertie in a manner that would certainly get him seized and tossed out of the palace by the guards if any guards were present. Bertie catches him, arm around his waist, the other hand cupping Lionel's head and reeling him in. There is no restraint in these kisses, and Bertie is already shuffling him to the sofa, tugging him down, smelling of sherry and cologne and cigarettes and sweat, purely masculine, irresistible, though nothing to which Lionel has ever responded before.

How will he ever return to the quiet familiarity of being Bertie's speech therapist after this? He won't, Lionel realizes with a fresh frisson of terror. Either this will go forward or it will be a disaster and he will never see Bertie again. He clings more tightly, pressing Bertie back into the cushions, and senses from the way Bertie arches beneath him that Bertie really does enjoy being on the bottom.

"I should ask you the same question," Bertie pants when they break apart to catch their breath, eyeing one another as if they've only just met and need to size each other up. "Please don't tell me it's because I'm the bloody King of England."

"You know I try not to think about that. It's just your job." A pause, then Bertie smiles at him, and Lionel can continue. "You're the most extraordinary man I've ever met, Bertie. You don't see it because you think you need to be perfect. Spending time with you is the greatest joy of my life." He knows what Bertie wants him to say. How seldom Bertie has likely had the words said aloud when they mattered. "I love you."

"I shall never tire of hearing that," Bertie whispers with a catch in his voice, though not a stammer. When Lionel kisses him again, he feels Bertie's legs move apart, letting one of Lionel's slide between them. It's the most exciting invitation of Lionel's life, even more than the first time Myrtle pulled up her skirt for him; he feels himself tremble like the young man he'd been then. He'll never last if he doesn't find a way to control his thoughts, yet he has no wish to diminish the intensity of the passion they inspire. This is _Bertie_, and if it weren't enough that his beloved tightly-wound aristocratic friend is offering himself, this is _the King_, this is England spread out on the sofa inviting him in.

"I'm yours," he whispers between kisses, rocking against Bertie, who's surging slowly up and down like waves under a ship. "Tell me everything you want."

He feels Bertie's laughter quivering his own chest. "I'll never last long enough for everything I want."

"That's both of us, then." Lionel has imagined this scene hundreds of times since that first kiss cracked open the vault where he'd tried to lock away such inappropriate thoughts about Albert Frederick Arthur George, yet he'd never guessed that it would be so filled with smiles and laughter that leave no room for fear. He'd thought it would change him, and Bertie, and particularly the way they spoke to one another, something Lionel has valued too highly to dream of putting at risk. Instead it seems that every moment has been leading them here.

_Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds._He laughs again, at himself for being so ridiculously sentimental and at the world with its skeptics. Shakespeare, he feels certain, would approve of dramatic hyperbole during lovemaking with the King. "Would you think me terribly forward if I invited you to bed?" Bertie asks, his tone seductive and confident.

"You've already been terribly forward. I should have no choice but to accept." They are still chuckling as they stumble to their feet together, looking over one another's rumpled clothing and straining trousers. They step apart to strip off in silence, Lionel piling his clothes as neatly as he can manage on the sofa, Bertie draping his across a small table.

There's a moment of awkwardness, not meeting one another's eyes, as Bertie approaches one side of the bed and Lionel automatically moves to the other. Then Bertie switches off the lights, leaving the room almost completely dark, and Lionel hears the rustle of covers being drawn back. He sits, pulling his legs up, and leans awkwardly on the pillows, at a loss for proper etiquette concerning whether the monarch or his chosen subject should move first. "Now lie back, open your legs, and think of England," he murmurs as if to himself.

They laugh so hard the bed shakes, though not hard enough to crash into the wall behind them, Lionel is relieved to note. He turns, and Bertie meets him in the middle, warm and exuberant, arms circling his waist and mouth finding his unerringly.

"It's true what they say about Australian men," Bertie whispers.

"That we're enormous?"

"That you're hairy." Bertie tugs a bit on Lionel's chest to prove the point. Lionel can't stop grinning. When their pricks bump between them, they duel for a minute, each refusing to let the other get on top, until Bertie laughs and concedes, "I must like hairy."

He rolls back, and Lionel rolls on top of him, following his mouth; Bertie's legs come up off the mattress, holding Lionel there, still rubbing against him. "I'm glad you like Australian men," Lionel tells him.

Most lovers are shy, or at least pretend to be shy the first time, and Bertie is naturally so reticent at all times. It hadn't occurred to Lionel that in bed Bertie might be so much the opposite, eager and playful, unafraid to speak. "I'm told that olive oil makes things easier," Bertie whispers conspiratorially. "But I couldn't come up with a reason to have it sent up, and I was too afraid to try to sneak down and steal it myself."

Startled, Lionel chuckles and gives his hip a reassuring squeeze - he hasn't quite worked up the courage to touch Bertie's bum. "Next time, tell them that your speech therapist said it's good for coating the throat. Or, even easier, I'll bring some myself."

"Next time," Bertie repeats exultantly, belatedly making Lionel realize how much he's presuming. How much he wants to presume. "This time, I might finish just like this."

The thought of Bertie finishing is more than Lionel can withstand. He groans, thrusting against Bertie, and conversation gives way to grunts and whispers of _yes_ and _harder_ and _oh fuck_, that last articulated so clearly that Lionel thinks manual stimulation of the genitals should be added to the list of treatments for stammerers. The seed of the House of Windsor spills over his hand and prick and belly, and he comes to completion rubbing himself in it.

Fingers stroking through his hair bring him back to himself. "That was...unprecedented," Bertie whispers, his voice gratifyingly breathless.

Lionel isn't a dogmatic man, yet the first phrase that comes to him is from King James. He can't help chuckling. "Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over."

He fears that Bertie will think he's being disrespectful, but Bertie hums and nods agreement, squeezing him close. "Exactly." Bertie lets Lionel shift his weight to the side, but they lie together like that till the sweat has cooled and semen has stuck them to each other like glue. "I don't ever want to move."

"Let's not. Let's stay like this and see if the world stops turning."

It doesn't, of course, and presently they get up, make an attempt to make themselves presentable, and summon the valet who takes Lionel to the suite of rooms where Myrtle is already asleep. She will know that he and the King did not spend the evening playing cards. What will the maid think in the morning when she changes those sheets? Perhaps she's paid not to think. As for Myrtle, he could leave her alone - there's another bed in the outer room of the suite - but _that_might constitute a betrayal, so he goes inside. She's breathing deeply and steadily, her sleep, at least, untroubled by what she's seen tonight. Maybe she had more to drink than he realized. He'll try to figure that out before explaining anything in the morning.

He dreams of dancing, twirling around with Myrtle and the King and the Queen, and his children and their children, and eventually the whole of England at one great ball where everyone smiles and waves at one another.

Lionel isn't certain that they'll see the King or Queen at breakfast, or even whether breakfast will be served in some public area of the palace. It is, and the Queen comes to bid them farewell, except the conversation seems more directed at ascertaining Myrtle's mood when giddiness has been replaced by a headache. Myrtle only picks at the food, though she seems content, smiling serenely at Lionel. In her haste to arrange her hair, she had asked no questions when they dressed.

The King puts in an appearance as well, albeit a brief one, since he has papers to sign. "I'll see you very soon. I have a speech to p-prepare," Bertie tells Lionel. His face is impassive, indifferent, yet Lionel knows his choice of the verb was deliberate. He allows himself a wink, and Bertie allows himself a smile in return.


	2. Chapter 2

(5)

Myrtle waits for Lionel to begin speaking in the car, but his conversation is entirely about the traffic. When they arrive home, he has patients to see and paperwork to complete. The boys have a lot to say at dinner and only feign moderate interest in their parents' royal visit. It's very late by the time Lionel comes to bed, and the cycle begins again the next day.

Perhaps, Myrtle thinks, there can never be an appropriate moment to ask one's husband whether he enjoyed the attentions of the King of England, particularly when the thought alone leaves her flushed and breathless. Images of the two of them together play out her dreams, where no sense of decency stops her from picturing the King in a manner she suspects to be treasonous.

At least it doesn't take long before she learns whether the King enjoyed himself. The telephone rings, and a few minutes later, Lionel is rushing around gathering various things. "I'm needed at the Palace," he explains, or mutters, really.

"Again, so soon?" His glance rests everywhere but upon Myrtle. "Well, then, I suppose you had better be off. Will you be back for supper?"

"I don't know. You and the boys shouldn't wait for me." The look he gives her is something more complicated than fear. It's guilt, the same guilt she saw on his face that night as well.

Something seems called for more reassuring than a name. Something loving, something dutiful. "Darling," she says, awkwardly, because she's heard the Queen call her husband that, as well as _sweetheart_and every other endearment that comes to mind. "There is a war on. I don't imagine the King always knows when he may need to prepare a speech."

"A speech. Yes." Lionel clears his throat. Perhaps he'll accept this offering. Or perhaps now he'll tell Myrtle what happened that night. His hands move to his throat, adjust his tie, fall back to his sides. He doesn't speak.

This time, she says, "Lionel." And waits for him to look at her before continuing. "I saw him with you. I saw how he looks at you." Lionel closes his eyes, though this time, she thinks, not to shut her out so much as to push aside the image of Bertie's face as she's certain he's conjured it a thousand times since that night. She has wondered how many people have ever seen the King of England so vulnerable. "If he needs you..." Lionel's eyes fly open, scrutinizing her to be certain that she understands. "...and the Queen doesn't object, then I don't see how I could possibly object." She expects to see his chin sag in relief, but his jaw remains clenched. "That is, if _you_don't object. Do you - not want to?"

His cheeks flush. That, then, is the reason for the guilt. "I don't object," he whispers hoarsely.

Of course he doesn't. For all the sophistication of his wit, Lionel is a simple, generous man, happy to give away his time to soldiers and children who can't afford his fees. It must be beyond his wildest dreams to have the King of England in love with him. A smile comes easily, though Myrtle is blushing; she is wet again, aching pleasurably low in her belly, picturing the King kissing her husband. "We both know this country can't survive without him. If he needs you, and you can help him, and you want to, then I want that for you."

To her astonishment, Lionel falls to his knees. He takes her hands in his. "I don't deserve you, Myrtle," he says against her skin.

"Don't be silly." She wonders whether he can smell her arousal, kneeling with his face so close to the heat between her legs. "I'm not the one being summoned by a king. Now go to him."

When he is gone, with the boys out of the house until supper at least, she shuts herself in her bedroom and conjures images of the King and her husband performing acts that she suspects are illegal. It is probably treasonous even to imagine it, but if her husband is permitted to enjoy such pleasure directly, she won't try to push it aside until she comes to resent the need for it. Since they were first married, Lionel has always encouraged her to admit her needs; he believes that it is vital not only to a happy marriage but to a healthy life. She can't be certain that the King is experiencing the satisfaction she imagines for him, but she can be sure of experiencing it at her own hand.

(6)

After twenty minutes of practicing the speech, Bertie tosses the pages onto his desk. He's not reading badly, but he has little patience today for the sort of work that would smooth out the rough parts, despite many years of being Lionel's most diligent pupil in that regard. "Let's have a swim," he says. He's had the north-west pavilion racquets court converted to a swimming pool, and despite the war, it has remained open. Lionel sputters that he doesn't have a suit, but the King assures him that one will be left for him in the dressing room.

They have the pool to themselves, of course. Bertie tells his staff that Logue has told him swimming will help him to relax. A hard swim _would _help, but of course that isn't what they intend, though they do swim at first - Bertie in steady, precise strokes learned in the Navy, Lionel as he did as a boy in Australia. Then, he and his friends leapt upon each other and wrestled wet and slippery without a second thought. He tries to recall that sense of freedom, not the terror of being seen, or heard, or suspected, and bringing down the monarchy in his carelessness. Then Bertie catches him underwater with his feet, pulling him close, and Lionel forgets every reason he has ever been afraid.

They end up back in the dressing room, a much cozier, private space where it is simply not possible that anyone could come upon them unseen. The lights are garish, but Lionel has stopped worrying about the thousand imperfections of his appearance. He lets Bertie tug off the borrowed bathing suit, and watches, breathless, as Bertie licks the pool water from his thighs and belly. Their pricks are very nearly the same size, though Bertie's curves significantly when erect; Lionel can't help wondering whether Bertie's parents would have tried to have it corrected had they known.

He kisses the scars around Bertie's knees, the reddish goosebumps around the hair on Bertie's thighs. He's certainly lacking the skills of Bertie's brother David's Parisian woman, who taught the King the pleasures of the flesh; he can only hope that enthusiasm will make up for the fact that this is new to him. Bertie doesn't seem any more experienced at it than Lionel, yet for a man who resists being touched by anyone outside of his family, his eagerness to suck the prick of a commoner is remarkable. They learn together, with results that are gratifying to them both, if somewhat messy, and Bertie can't stop grinning afterward, as if he's won some award at the expense of everyone who contributed to the misery of his childhood.

"I may want to do that before every speech from now on," he says.

"What, have me perform that particular act upon you?" Lionel smiles, trying to picture himself beneath the King's desk while the King poses, speech in hand and a world-weary expression on his face.

Bertie laughs, fingers sliding through Lionel's hair. "Only if you wish. I meant the other way round. It would relax the throat, don't you think?"

Helplessly Lionel bursts out laughing. "You've discovered an entirely new treatment for stammering. Perhaps you should write a book."

"I'm sure the idea has merit. My mouth and jaw feel very relaxed." Bertie's hand tips Lionel's head back, gazing at him with an expression that makes Lionel's breath catch. "You know that there's no one else in the whole of the world who could do this for me."

It's absolute rubbish, of course; there are hundreds if not thousands of subjects who would get on their knees for George VI or gratefully allow him to do the same. Yet Lionel is the one the King wants, and at the moment he has no interest in analyzing why. "You know there's nothing in the world I wouldn't do for you, Bertie," he replies.

Bertie's eyebrow lifts. "If there were, and I asked you to do it, would you say no?"

Lionel gives himself a minute to think before answering, disguising his hesitation by shifting his weight off Bertie's arm. Which does Bertie value more highly in him - honesty or acceptance? Honesty wins out. "If you asked me to do something that truly went against my principles, I would say so. I meant that there's nothing I can imagine your asking of me that I would not happily give."

"Suppose I asked you to break the law."

"Are we speaking of high treason or the Labouchere Amendment? I believe I've already demonstrated my willingness to violate decency laws for my King."

"The Articles of War are quite specific in naming capital offenses."

"No one's been hanged for sodomy for more than a century, not even in the Navy." They are both quiet for a few minutes, resting on the dressing room lounge that's very much like a day bed. "I've already told you that I'm willing. But the risk to you is -"

Bertie is already moving to kiss him. "I need this," he interrupts. "You know that I'll be as careful and as prudent as in all other aspects of my life."

"Then I'm yours," Lionel says, smiling, but Bertie shakes his head.

"No more talk of ownership. You're the one who insisted that we must be equals. And I can't - can't go round telling people I'm theirs. Not even my family."

"I know that, Bertie." Lionel finds his hand, which is still wearing the ring from his coronation. Lionel doesn't suppose he ever takes it off. "It's all right. I'm happy to be yours anyway." He kisses the back of the hand, then the palm.

Bertie's eyes look suspiciously bright. "It will have to be enough that I love you."

"It's more than enough. Because I love you more than I can possibly tell you without bursting into song or some other peculiar behavior."

"I'm used to your peculiarities." Lionel is certain now that it's meant as a compliment. He kisses Bertie, and the two of them rest in each other's arms a bit longer than is prudent.

(7)

Everyday life feels unreal to Lionel. He stammers when he must ask the grocer where he can find olive oil, and winces when he learns how much it costs. Troop movements in Europe have made it quite difficult to obtain. It's not that Lionel can't pay, but the grocer is sure to ask Myrtle about her recipes requiring olive oil, and even if Myrtle refrains from asking Lionel what he needs it for, she's certain to speculate. On several occasions he's caught her looking at him curiously - not just curiously, but with a very specific interest - and while Lionel has never embarrassed easily, this sort of attention makes him blush.

It's absurd, he knows, to feel that he's being unfaithful to the King of England when he gets into bed with his own wife. He's terribly lucky that Myrtle takes it as an honor of sorts to have her husband singled out among men; she walks around the house with that small, secret smile on her face, and she kisses him with new heat. Between her and Bertie, he's having the most gratifying sex of his life. He'd feel better if he knew that Elizabeth was enjoying her husband as much as Lionel is enjoying him, but though he knows her to be affectionate, Lionel suspects that the Queen is too much of an aristocrat ever to need to stuff a pillow in her face to muffle her own cries as Myrtle does when he uses his fingers just so on her and inside her.

Bertie wants to take him hunting. Lionel isn't an avid sportsman, but he suspects that the trip is an excuse to get away together as much as an excuse to go shooting. He won't be able to put up any pretense to Myrtle that this is about rehearsing a speech.

"Hunting," she says when he tells her. "Well, I don't suppose you can refuse."

"Of course I can." Lionel tries to keep irritation out of his voice, disliking what she seems to be implying about Bertie, and about himself. "I could decline any of his invitations. He isn't some Medieval tyrant..."

"Oh, sweetheart, that's not what I meant." The speed and sympathy of her response only make Lionel feel more uncomfortable. "I meant that if he has already told his staff or whoever it is that makes the arrangements that he intends to bring you along, it will look very peculiar if you aren't there."

She's right, of course. He has worked so hard to fit in at court, which has mostly meant becoming invisible whenever any of the ministers or members of the royal family are present, that he has never stopped to think whether anyone would comment if he failed to appear when expected. "If it were a problem for you and the boys..." he begins.

"You know we'll be fine. Your patients will be fine, they're all very proud of you. Go and enjoy yourself with him - I imagine it will be more relaxing than being at the Palace."

"Myrtle..." He feels that he owes her some explanation, at least a few details, and at the same time he feels fiercely protective of Bertie, even more so of this than of the things he's learned about Bertie's childhood. "I feel dreadful that I've been gone so much."

Her eyes fill with laughter. "You shouldn't. When you were acting in plays, you were gone much longer into the night. It was harder to live with you when you were sulking because nobody would let you play Lear. You seem more satisfied in your work than I've ever seen you, and it isn't as if you're neglecting me." A mischievous smile turns the corners of her mouth. "Though if you need to talk to someone, you know I'll be happy to listen."

Lionel feels he must give her something, though he has no idea what he can offer that isn't already hers or doesn't belong to the King. "I feel quite absurdly fortunate," he tells her. "And very happy." Then, because this seems insufficient, he adds, "He loves me, you know."

He shouldn't have said it, but she is nodding before he finishes. "Oh yes. I know." Her arms come around his neck and she kisses his cheek. "You mustn't think that it upsets me. We all owe our first duty to the King - if he needed you to be a soldier, you'd be gone much longer." All around them families are losing men to the war. Their own sons may be next. "I know there's enough love in you for both of us."

(8)

As it transpires, "hunting" doesn't mean stalking deer or chasing foxes, but staying in a small gamekeeper's cottage on the Balmoral estate, where staff from the castle can be summoned if needed but are not present otherwise. Just after they arrive, Bertie flings off all his clothes and dives into the lake, though the water feels so painfully cold to Lionel that he can't bear to wade in above his ankles.

"My great-grandmother came here with her ghillie," Bertie tells him, teeth chattering as he steps onto the bank. At first Lionel is too concerned with getting him warm to realize that Bertie means Her Majesty Queen Victoria. Does the King himself believe that that icon of morality took a lover? He's heard the stories about Mr Brown, but never supposed that any faithful Englishman took them to be true, particularly not her own descendants. Still shivering, Bertie kisses him there in the open, with the long grass blowing around their bare legs.

Bertie wants to make love on the sheepskins on the floor in front of the large cottage fireplace, but Lionel convinces him that his knees won't stand for it. He isn't really worried about his knees, but the rest: that this place is unfamiliar to him, that he's used to servants swirling around Bertie at the most inconvenient moments, that he's never done this before and is fearful enough about hurting Bertie without having to worry about injuring his back. The bedroom door has a wooden bolt, and it's on the cozy bed inside where they blissfully breach the laws of God and man, aided by the small bottle of olive oil that someone has left in the kitchen along with fruit, eggs, and more wine than a regiment could drink in a week.

"They think we're out here getting drunk," Bertie explains, leaning out the window in a warm robe since Lionel won't let him smoke otherwise, and he's craving a cigarette after screaming, really screaming, while ejaculating with Lionel's prick plunging in and out of him. It was messier than Lionel had expected - a towel on top of the sheepskin might be a necessity for discretion's sake - and neither of them had been able to move afterward, though strangely it had been Lionel and not Bertie who couldn't stop shaking, even though Lionel knew Bertie must be sore.

"I suppose we had better drink some of this, then," Lionel says, glancing at the bottles and realizing he'll have to pick randomly or let Bertie distinguish among expensive labels. It doesn't bother him not knowing. Lionel has always insisted on equality while working, yet it has always been a performance destined to end the moment anyone else arrived. So completely alone, the balance is different, especially after what they've just done. Lionel understands now why Bertie wanted it to be here, and is even more grateful. "Are you hungry?" he asks. "I could cook these eggs."

Bertie laughs, stubbing out the cigarette and turning to him. "I didn't bring you all the way to the Highlands to cook for me."

"Yes, I know." They share a small, private smile. "But I'm happy to do it, and _I'm _hungry. Eggs are among the few things Myrtle trusts me not to burn."

He can see that Bertie is thinking of suggesting that they get food from the staff up at the castle, which would avoid the issue of having Lionel cook for him but break the sense of isolation and the freedom it offers. "If you're sure it's not a bother," he says finally, shutting the window. If Lionel had thought that buying olive oil to bugger the King felt unreal, it's nothing compared to cracking open an egg to feed to the King in this little cottage beyond the edge of the known world. But then Bertie comes over to pour wine for them both, and Lionel forgets that Bertie owns this cottage and the castle beyond, and, in principle at least, the whole of the country. In this place, Bertie is only Bertie, whom Lionel can love wholly for himself and not as anything else.

They share the eggs off a single plate and go back to bed together, exhausted after the journey up. Bertie curls into his side like one of Lionel's boys used to do when a nightmare brought him into his parents' room. It's warm and sticky and the bed still smells like sex. Lionel isn't certain he can switch off his mind to rest, but after only a few minutes of lying awake to ponder the many ways he's transgressed against nearly everything in which he'd once thought he believed, dreams erase guilt like a royal pardon, or like grace. _Owe no man any thing but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law._

(9)

They share the bed, something they have never done for longer than a few stolen minutes at the Palace. Bertie wakes with Lionel pressed alongside him, not clinging but warm against his arm and hip. It puts him in mind of when he was a boy and woke from a bad dream; most often he went into David's room, since he didn't dare tell the nanny, and David would sometimes let him sleep at the foot of his bed. Elizabeth prefers her own space in sleep, often her own bedroom, particularly now that she doesn't want to risk another pregnancy. Bertie doesn't resent it - she is always there for him when he needs her - but in this cozy space, in the arms of someone who has never once refused his kisses, he feels more himself than he has ever done before.

Lionel strokes his hair and they lie half-awake for several minutes, not speaking, not moving much, listening to the birds outside and the occasional creak of the old wood of the cottage, which smells of past fires and faded heather. Eventually Bertie lifts his head and kisses Lionel, and they make sweet, unhurried love, mostly with their hands and mouths, still without conversation.

It's the only time Bertie can keep silent all day. He talks and talks - about Balmoral, about visiting here as a child, about his parents, his brothers, his terrifying grandfather, his German cousins, his tutors. Where he learned to swim, how he learned to shoot. The beloved dog his mother had ordered shot after it bit his younger brother. The pony that had gone wild when he couldn't speak clearly to calm it. He talks around cheese, bread and butter at the table, and over the calls of ducks as they walk around the lake carrying pieces that he doesn't know if Lionel knows how to fire.

They will not unholster the rifles left forgotten in the grass as Bertie talks about being last in his class at the Royal Naval College, about the agonizing ulcer that kept him off active duty during pivotal months in the war, about commanding boys in the Royal Air Force, about playing tennis at Cambridge before the dreadful realization that some of his opponents would let him win. As always, Lionel asks a lot of questions, watching him and smiling fondly. Hours pass before Bertie realizes that he doesn't have his cigarettes; Lionel must have hidden them. He talks about every cure he tried for stammering, the punishments when he couldn't talk right or walk right, the names his brothers called him. He talks about how they taunted him more for his weeping than his stutter.

Every story leads to another, with each one deepening his sense that there is nothing he could confess that Lionel won't find interesting, unique, forgivable. Bertie tells him things he didn't know he remembered, things he's certainly never told anyone else. When he had courted Elizabeth, he had been aware at all times of things he must not say and must not do. Those categories simply don't exist with Lionel. Here Bertie isn't a king but a man with a complicated and somewhat colorful life, not someone with anything to be ashamed of, no reason hesitations in his speech should keep him silent.

Finally Bertie pauses, a bit embarrassed, and tries to turn Lionel's questions around. Lionel tells him about diving off the jetty naked when he was a boy, studying music, fancying himself a performer, working a brief miserable stint at a gold mine, becoming a teacher, realizing with some chagrin that many of his students would become better public speakers than Lionel himself. He admits that he plays tennis, too, and they toss up mock serves with fallen chestnuts, smacking them with the butts of their rifles. After a few attempts, Bertie declares himself the winner. He starts to sing the anthem in his own honor, which Lionel undercuts by humming "Waltzing Matilda," though Bertie laughs when he discovers that Lionel can't remember all the words.

As the afternoon wears on, Bertie fires off the rifles a few times in case anyone at the castle might be listening for shots. They walk round to the entrance to the kitchen, where Lionel stands deferentially behind him, hands crossed behind his back and head lowered, while Bertie spins for the staff a stammering tale of a buck that got away. He accepts some of the stew the cook is preparing for those working in the castle, refusing to permit any additional cooking for himself and Lionel. When they turn their back on the castle whose rooms Lionel has never seen and walk back down the path beyond the gardens, Lionel never glances back at the high turrets.

Back at the cottage, they sample wine, opening different bottles, spilling out most of the contents. Bertie has no intention of wasting the evening by drinking too much. He waits until it is fully dark to draw the curtains, then piles the sheepskins and pulls Lionel to him in the center of the main room, trembling against him before Lionel kisses him and lowers him to the warmth of the fleece.

It's more frightening than the night before, when he hadn't known that giving himself to Lionel would be the most intimate experience of his life. He'd thought it might be painful or merely that he might dislike it, which had seemed like the natural responses of a man and therefore nothing to be feared. Yet once they began, it was nothing like he had expected, nothing like his vaguely shameful first times trying things with prostitutes and lascivious showgirls, and very different than making love with Elizabeth, who is after all a lady whom he could never expect to kiss his willy or touch that dirty bit in the back. The pleasure of having Lionel inside him overwhelms him even in memory - not only the physical sensations, but the intensity of feeling, so much love and need he hadn't known could exist alongside his love for his wife and daughters and the demands of a nation.

Lionel gallantly offers to take a turn on the bottom, and Bertie stumbles over his words in declining. Even "fuck" makes him stammer when he himself is the object of the verb. He is afraid of what Lionel may think of him, but Lionel only smiles and nods in encouragement. Bertie doesn't know whether Lionel finds it womanish or perverse or wicked to want to be penetrated; he had thought Lionel was a religious man, yet Lionel has few inhibitions and seemingly no moral qualms. When Bertie asks whether Lionel believes the act to be a mortal sin, as the Catholics do, Lionel replies that Christ taught love above all. Love is a word he uses freely, comfortably, not only about his family and his work, but his longtime friends and his passion for music and Shakespeare. He says it to Bertie with such joy on his face that Bertie can't remember why he was frightened.

Perhaps it's because Lionel is Australian, or a commoner, or perhaps it's simply because Lionel is Lionel, who gets teary-eyed at coronations and state speeches, moments that loom larger in Bertie's life than in Lionel's own. Obviously Lionel was taught very different things in his childhood about when it was appropriate for men to cry. Bertie watches him rub oil over his fingers, wearing an expression of such tenderness that Bertie's throat closes over. It reminds him of how he feels about his own daughters, that he would shield them with his own body from any suffering.

He swallows hard, and Lionel gazes at him in alarm. "I'm hurting you."

"No, you're not." He takes a few deep breaths from the chest, an exercise that Lionel taught him. "I just don't know how to tell you how grateful I am."

"You don't have to tell me, Bertie. I owe you far more." Lionel pulls him into his arms, and Bertie lets tears run down his face because he can, because he knows Lionel will understand that it's a gift and not a show of weakness.

Lionel kisses away the tears, and kisses his mouth, and kisses over his jaw and down his throat until the kisses become hungrier, there are teeth involved, and fingers pressing Bertie's hips; he's made Lionel fully hard. He keeps forgetting that Lionel is quite a bit older than he is, as Lionel had reminded him that afternoon. It takes Lionel longer both to start up and to finish, and he can't start up again as quickly, though Bertie had thought at first that Lionel must have more control over his body or perhaps was holding back. Lionel takes his time getting Bertie ready, putting his mouth on nearly every part of Bertie in the meanwhile. If Bertie hadn't already cast aside all his qualms, they'd evaporate in the heat of those kisses.

It does hurt more this time because Bertie still feels sore inside from the night before, but it's an ache he welcomes, and it fades when Lionel starts to stroke him, hand steady and confident on him. He makes no effort to be quiet or still, experimenting with the angle of his hips and the clenching of his muscles, and he finally succeeds in making Lionel finish first, with a roar worthy of his name.

Afterwards, Bertie is lightheaded with joy. They finish the open bottle of wine they've left sitting beside the stale bread, licking jam from their fingers when it drips over the side. Then they retire to the bedroom, where Lionel insists on having a look at Bertie to make sure he hasn't damaged anything. It's a wicked, dirty pleasure to have Lionel touch him there when he hasn't even washed, and Bertie's hard again faster than he can quite believe. Though Lionel pleads exhaustion for his own part, he chuckles and puts his mouth in places Bertie never imagined anyone putting his mouth, and strokes him, and sucks Bertie, and makes Bertie spend himself so utterly that neither of them can be roused to get up until all the wine Bertie has drunk makes it a necessity.

By the final morning, they have no shame, washing together, chasing each other with damp towels, pissing with the door open, bowling over empty wine bottles with an old cricket ball found in a closet. They take out the spare linens to put on the unused fold-out bed on which Lionel is supposed to have been sleeping, then jump on it to muss them. They spill wine on the sheets in the bedroom right over a suspicious-looking stain. Bertie laughs easily but he doesn't talk endlessly. He's said everything important, and there are only a few bits worth repeating, even when the car arrives.

(10)

The stammer is always more apparent when Bertie has been working too hard, but the first time Lionel sees him after their return, it's so pronounced that Lionel wonders whether Bertie's unconscious mind is sabotaging his conscious plans, giving him a reason to keep Lionel at his side. He wants to tell Bertie, whose eyes have dark circles under them, that he will be there whenever Bertie wishes, but Privy Council members and BBC officials keep interrupting, sending up notes concerning the speech, and by the next afternoon, Bertie can't manage a single read through the pages without infuriating himself.

"You're exhausted," Lionel tells him. He knows that it's more, that Bertie is grieving for a life he'll never have - a life they'll never have together - but that will pass, once the Council gives the King a few minutes to catch his breath. Wordlessly, he guides Bertie to the sofa, gesturing for him to sit. "Rest for a few minutes." He takes the cigarette from Bertie's hand and knows from Bertie's lack of struggle that Bertie is truly depleted.

"I can't rest," Bertie snaps. "They all think I've rested enough already, and t-there's work to be done." He looks resigned, sad, older than Lionel has ever seen him. Lionel remembers the joyous face of the man he sang with by the lake and wishes he knew how, within these walls, to bring it back.

A hundred times or more, Lionel has asked himself whether he did the right thing, yielding to what Bertie wanted...to what he wanted himself. From a legal standpoint, it's inexcusable, while from a professional standpoint, it's unethical. Yet Lionel is quite sure that Bertie would never have told all of those stories to his speech therapist, not even to one whom he considered a friend. Those secrets would remain trapped inside the King, tripping up his consonants, blocking his communication with his family and his nation at a time when the country needs him even more than his little girls need him.

Only love could have loosened Bertie's tongue. Lionel may go on questioning his own motives, but he can't make himself be sorry. Not even the Bible could do that when he looked to it for proof of his transgression. _Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love._

He sits beside Bertie, though they will never be equals here, no matter the illusion that Lionel demands in this room when they work together. "Close your eyes for a few minutes," he says. "Don't think about the speech. Or the Germans. Think about being somewhere you feel entirely safe."

"I don't dare." Slowly Bertie's head falls forward as his body slumps. His hand clutches at Lionel's sleeve. "Stay with me," he mumbles, his words slurring with exhaustion.

"I'm right here." Entirely safe, thinks Lionel. A northern sun rises over a lake behind his own eyes. "Stay here. P-please. 'Til..." Bertie never finishes the phrase, nor, Lionel hopes, the thought. He is fully asleep, lips falling open, eyes shut. The bed they shared in the mountains exists in a different world. Lionel shifts, and Bertie's head comes to rest against his shoulder, already a dead weight. The fingers loosen on his wrist, though they don't let go.

Because they're meant to be rehearsing undisturbed and the entire staff knows that that means to keep out, Lionel lets his head tilt toward Bertie's. His face comes to rest in thick, dark hair that smells of too many cigarettes, but beneath that, a scent he will never forget from a pillow beside his own. The room fades slowly, disappearing into the fog of the Highlands, kept safe in dreams until he may see it again.

(11)

Elizabeth has knocked twice and is growing concerned. She can't stall the councilors forever. "Bertie," she calls, and this time, when she receives no reply, she carefully slips through the door.

Her husband is on the wide sofa, face pressed against Lionel Logue's shoulder, fast asleep. Logue appears to be sleeping as well, his head bent over Bertie's. She had known that her husband was exhausted, though she believed it to be her duty to keep him focused, not to plead that he needed a rest; looking at Logue now, she feels the bitterness of being trapped in her own position instead of his, unable to give her own husband what he needs.

She'd understood when she agreed to marry him what a royal life would mean. From this angle she can see that Bertie is holding Lionel in place, fingers grasping at his arm. His mouth is half-open, like a child's. She wants to weep.

Slowly Lionel raises his head and meets her gaze. There's guilt in his expression, but more than that, concern. "He couldn't keep his eyes open," he breathes, barely a whisper.

"I know. I'll tell the others that he's not feeling well. The doctor may insist upon seeing him, so please be ready if I knock."

He nods a fraction, smiling gratefully at her. Bertie shifts in sleep, hand sliding further across Lionel's arm. Elizabeth pushes down her resentment, conjures a smile in return. It isn't as if she's doing this for Lionel Logue.

Nor, despite the pleasure he evidently takes in her husband, is Logue doing it entirely for himself. "I know that you'll take care of him," she says, nodding back. That Logue will do so to the best of his abilities, she has no doubt. Bertie chose well, though really, it had been herself, hadn't it, who took the chance and made that first call. When Bertie eventually gives the speech, he'll be applauded. The outcome will be as they all wished, more or less.

"Thank you." Lionel smiles again, and Elizabeth turns to go. She'll have to send them off to Scotland again soon - Bertie needs his breaks from all this hard work or his health will suffer. Perhaps she'll even invite Mrs Logue to Sandringham, to keep everybody happy.

She can't complain. Since her brothers were lost in the Great War, she has always known that she will choose service over idleness. She does not wish for a frivolous life. In this, Bertie is so much like her. And in that single aspect, Lionel Logue is so much like him.

She had never dared to dream that they would all be so lucky.

FIN


End file.
